The Pushkin Club presents the first London screening of the documentary film Madly in Dissent, (2023) directed by Ksenia and Kirill Sakharnov.

A man confronting a totalitarian state: Viktor Fainberg (1931–2023) was one of eight demonstrators who on August 25, 1968 dared to go onto Red Square and protest against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was then subjected to the heaviest repression in the USSR: punitive psychiatry. Rather than lapsing into despair, he managed to organise an international campaign against the use of psychiatry for political purposes from his prison cell, where he went on numerous hunger strikes.

After finally being allowed to emigrate in 1975, Fainberg founded Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse (CAPA), which fought against the political misuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union until 1988.

Madly in Dissent contains unique interviews with Fainberg and his daughter Sara, as well as drawings by Nusya Krasovitskaya, the granddaughter of the poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya, who also took part in the Red Square demonstration and was similarly incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital.

The film is 77 minutes long and is in Russian with English subtitles. It will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Sarah Fainberg, a daughter of Victor Fainberg, a political scientist and researcher, and Ksenia Sakharnova, the director, both via zoom.

The Q&A will be in English and Russian, with live translation to English.

About the Filmmakers: 

Kirill Sakharnov is a graduate of the All-Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK). In 2012 he founded Sugardocs, a production company specialising in films on human rights issues. He is a laureate of the Moscow Helsinki Group Prize in the category "For the protection of human rights through culture and art" for 2019.

Ksenia Sakharnova is also a graduate of VGIK. Since 2012 she has been working with Kirill as a director and producer of films for Sugardocs. Since 2018, she has acted as an organiser and presenter of film screenings in collaboration with the Gulag History Museum (Moscow) Sakharov Center (Moscow) and Yeltsin Center (Yekaterinburg).

After the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ksenia and Kirill emigrated to Poland, where for the last two years they have been running the "Dialogue Through Film" project in Warsaw, which includes screenings and discussions of the best films from Eastern European countries.

Selected Filmography:

Madly in Dissent (2023, Czech Republic, Israel, documentary, 77')

Natalia Gorbanevskaya: «I am not a heroine» (2016, Russia, documentary, 75')

Parallels. Events. People (2013-2015, USA, web-series, 36 episodes).

Olya’s love (Russia-Austria, documentary, 2014)

Mamas, Kids and the Law (2013, Russia, documentary, 52’).

5 minutes of Freedom (2012, Russia, documentary, 86’). This was the Sakharnovs’ first full-length film, which also dealt with the 1968 demonstration on Red Square, but in the context of a new generation of young protesters in Russia, who staged a demonstration on Red Square to commemorate the legendary protest.

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